EMPIRE
Peter Trefonas - 1979
CLOAD Magazine
The TRS-80 SimCity (at least as close as we get).
A buy & sell style game that moves
very quickly thanks to tragically efficient keyboard commands.
Feed your people, build your army, and attack opponents trying to do the same thing.
Thanks to modern technology, you can now play at
5X THE SPEED,
sparing you the pain of waiting for 5 computer player turns.
Empire plays better in 2024 than it did in 1981!
Attacks play out in real time - something that
never happens in text based games.
They stand in brilliant contrast to the rest of the game.
Attacks are incredibly basic: Just 2 numbers counting down.
Pray your number counts down
slower. Seriously, it's harrowing.
Even in 2024, this abstraction remains insanely compelling.
Peter uncovered something casinos (and mobile game devs) must never discover.
As awful as it sounds,
slaughtering serfs (after destroying their army)
is the main reason to play Empire.
When your army fights their army, it's two small numbers counting down quickly.
You acclimatize to this.
When your army finally fights their serfs, your
small number counts down
slowly while their
large number counts down
quickly.
Contrasted with the previous army fights, you feel very powerful.
Plus, don't your hard working army guys deserve a break?
Extra rewards are given for killing lots of serfs.
So bad, yet so good.
The tremendous satisfaction of breaking through your opponent's army,
then slaughtering their helpless serfs, has never been rivalled.
The absolute agony when this
happens to you has also never been rivalled.
I've never felt so helpless.
Being able to reload/restart soothes this pain... somewhat.
I would avoid multiplayer where that's not possible.
Watching your friend put on a brave face as their number ticks down,
time slowing to a crawl while all oxygen leaves the room, is an ... experience.
After The Fall
Consider buying
Endlight, our chaotic action game nothing like Empire but everything your TRS-80 heart desires.
I'll never
ask you to choose between Empire and Endlight, I'll
tell you to choose
Endlight. Boom.
Tips
-
Make sure you play 5X THE SPEED!
Spares you the pain of waiting for 5 computer player turns.
-
Empire is all about the wheat.
If you fail to feed your people enough, you risk getting assassinated.
Money is worth less than wheat. Fighting and gaining land is secondary to wheat.
Should you choose to sell wheat, always ask yourself "Will doing this kill me?"
The answer is always yes.
-
Serfs are the most precious commodity in the game.
You need them to increase the size of your army, but their numbers increase slowly and they're killed easily.
Always feed them extra so the births counteract the deaths by disease.
-
After you feed your army and people, you must have 10,000+ wheat for next year's harvest.
If you've used all wheat, next year you'll have 0 wheat even with great weather.
-
Try to attack the same person twice. The first destroys their army,
and the second slaughters serfs en masse. If you kill enough serfs,
you deal extra damage and receive this ultra disturbing report
![](game-EMPIREImage3.GIF)
-
Always leave some army for defense. Even a single army man can protect your serfs from an enemy attack.
Remember: It's extremely hard to replenish dead serfs.
-
The advantage of going first
At the end of a full round, Empire shows you everyone's stats including how much army they have.
Since you go first (before others have a chance to replenish their armies)
you know how much army they'll have when you attack! Get those serfs!
-
The drawback of going first
Oppenents can attack you even after you destroy their army.
Their full turn comes after you're done attacking,
where they'll buy a full army again (just like you).
You can mitigate this by killing their serfs and stealing lots of land, which reduces their max army size.
-
If you're attacking serfs, they will defeat you - so never send your entire army to attack serfs.
Additionally, you'll only deal extra damage if there's an army man left to collect.
Nothing is more disheartening than killing hundreds of innocent people, and only winning acres of land.
-
The maximum size of your army is determined by how much palace you've bought (which attracts nobles),
how many serfs you have, and how much land you have.
- While fighting, to see how many troops you have attack with a ridiculous amount (I always use 500).
The game will ignore the attack and reply "You only have X troops."
Ta-da! You have outsmarted the system.
-
At any point, you can have a heart attack and die.
There's nothing that I know of that can prevent this.
Remember to Copy (Ctrl+C) or Save (Ctrl+S) your game before this happens (modern tech to the rescue!).
The good news is heart attacks happen to computer opponents!
- * Spoiler * You'll eventually get all the land including all the barbarian land yet the game continues.
You'll eventually get 100% palace and the game continues.
The game suddenly ended at year 40 and finally declared me emperor, a feat never achieved until 2024.
Experience that yourself
- * Spoiler * When just the barbarians are left, don't completely defeat them.
Use them to reduce your army to 0, then ignore them.
That way you have no army to feed saving some grain.
Stuff
-
Empire shipped on cassette with CLOAD Magazine (Feb 1981).
This version had major errors and would crash after playing awhile.
CLOAD shipped 2 fixes/patches afterward (March and April 1981) that had to be manually inputted.
Unable to find a patched version I applied the fixes using the TRS32 emulator in December 2011.
I was able to make the changes on PC and copy/paste them into a TRS-80 (blows away the line editor)!
I tested by playing 2 full games of Empire and the patches appear to work!
We're emulating my patched version.
Bonus: Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site lists the patched version!
-
(this information comes from YouTube comment by Stanley Holloway)
Empire was written for TRS-80 Model I Level 1 Basic.
This is amazing for 2 reasons:
- I believe Peter only had 2Kb to work with. Model I had 4Kb, but Level 1 Basic consumed 2Kb
- Level 1 Basic was extremely limited, and quickly replaced by Level 2 Basic (created by Microsoft no less)
-
You can view the Empire BASIC source code here!
In the emulator, you can press ESC (TRS-80 Break) to edit the code.
Beware, the line editor is not for the weak of heart.
-
To max out all available memory, Peter removed all spaces in the code (see image).
Additionally, when the game first runs it deletes the first 6 lines of code (comments) to free up more memory.
Insane trick I've never seen since. Lack of memory makes people do crazy things.
![](game-EMPIREImage2.gif)
-
Line 6 of Empire that code reads
CREDITS: 'Hammurabi' BY RICK MERRIL & DAVID AHL, 'Santa Paravia' BY GEORGE BLANK
Hamurabi was created by Doug Dyment in 1968 and released on the PDP-8.
Gameplay featured 10 rounds of wheat trading but no fighting armies.
"Around 1971 David H. Ahl ported it to DEC BASIC and in 1973 published it in 101 BASIC Computer Games."
In 1978, Hamurabi was released on the TRS-80.
Hammurabi was misspelled Hamurabi to fit the 8-character filename limit.
Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio was created by George Blank in 1978 and released on TRS-80 (and other things).
Gameplay featured graphics, wheat trading and investing but no fighting armies.
Taipan! (1979, Art Canfil) was likely an inspiration as well,
especially the somewhat real time boat battles (1:39).
Rest assured, they all sucked.
-
While Peter stopped making games, he remains an absolute genius.
"Trefonas has published at least 132 journal articles and technical publications. He has received 107 American patents, and has more than 15 active patent applications pending."
Original Instructions
(originally provided as a separate basic program, copied here for your convenience)
Hello! Welcome to E M P I R E ...
Imagine yourself to be the ruler of a small, unimportant piece
of European land way back in the medieval ages. Your country is
beset by many problems - no industry, little trade, small army,
underpopulation, angry neighbors, plague, and all the other
day-to-day problems a capable leader must learn to face.
Ambitious by necessity, you must aquire land, capital, and an
army just to survive. Because of the short lifetimes back then,
you'll have only a limited amount of time to build your country into an empire.
Competent rule will gradually be rewarded with lofty titles:
Knight, Prince, King, and finally
Emperor
Sounds easy?
Then consider this - five other city-states are
also struggling to become the emperor, and they don't just intend
to passively watch you win. They control armies which can
attack at a moments notice, and perhaps devastate your country.
They control the grain market, and if you think OPEC is bad,
just wait and see how scarce and expensive grain can become.
Of course, a competent ruler could make a killing on the grain market.
With proper planning, your harvests should be plentiful.
You could solve overpopulation problems by raising a
large army to be killed off in battle.
Nevertheless, your overiding concern should be lebensraum - living room.
There is only a limited amount of land to be conquered.
If you can defeat the barbarian hordes, and the well trained standing armies of the other nations,
and then defeat their peasant militias, perhaps you may attain the well deserved title of Emperor.
Taxes
The customs tax applies only to immigrants to your nation.
Often, lower customs tax means more immigrants.
The sales tax is closely intertwined into your capitalist economy.
While it has the potential of raising lots of money,
overly high taxes tend to stifle industrial profits.
Income taxes are paid by all inhabitants and industry.
Again, lower income tax often means increased industrial output.
You have the option each year to invest your earnings in
different types of trade and industry. In the years to follow,
these investments, if managed correctly, will more than pay for themselves.
Types of investments
- Marketplaces are a relatively cheap investment that are quite
profitable because they encourage the formation of a middle class - the merchants.
And, as you are probably aware, the middle class pays an inordinate share of taxes.
- Grain Mills are necessary to process the harvest, and consequently,
usually do quite well when there is a large harvest.
- Foundries are necessary for the creation of large armies.
Several of them will allow you to equip a much larger army
than otherwise.
- Shipyards have the greatest profit potential of all investments.
Because of a larger volume of orders during good weather,
there is often a better return during these years.
- Armies are never a profitable investment. Besides costing
a large initial investment, they also cost a lot to maintain
and train. In addition, they also require a greater fraction
of the harvest than serfs.
- Of course, one should give himself the luxury of building a
Palace. What else could distinguish an emperor from all the
other kings with their castles, than a palace? Also, with a
palace, your country will begin to attract more nobles.
Other general hints:
You always lose 10% as a brokerage fee when dealing on the
grain market. When you sell your grain at different prices,
the market price is the weighted average of the sales prices
(this helps to prevent large yearly price fluctuations). To
prevent those unscrupulous rulers who try to use the market as
a method to avoid the rats, you can't buy back your own grain.
Also, leave a portion of your grain reserve for planting for
next year's harvest. Often, it is beneficial to feed your people much more than they
require. Immigrants are usually attracted to a prosperous nation,
and sometimes, even merchants and nobles move in.
Up to six people can play this game. Rulers not played by
humans will be played by your TRS-80, with its playing ability
based on the average of the human players.
Winning
- To become a Prince, you must pass these rather stringent
qualifications:8 marketplaces, 4 mills, palace 20% completed,
a land-over-serf ratio of 4.8, over 10 nobles, and over 2300
serfs.
- To become a King, you must have:14 marketplaces, 6 mills,
palace 60% completed, 1 foundry, land-over-serf ratio of at
least 5.0, Over 2600 serfs and 25 nobles.
- To become an EMPEROR you must meet all of the above qualifications,
and over 3100 serfs and 40 nobles.
- Editor's Note: No mention how one becomes the aforementioned Knight
Position the tape and type 'CLOAD' when you are ready.
Good luck, future rulers!
Empire came on the CLOAD cassette and therefore had no fancy cover image